Between
late September and early October 2008, I watched Art
and Money – a series of three documentaries on the contemporary art boom of
the Noughties. The first show The Mona
Lisa Curse was written and presented by my hero Robert Hughes. In it, the
Australian critic gave a tour-de-force performance of old-school puritanical
pulpit thumping against the greed, stupidity and cunning of contemporary
artists, collectors and museum heads. Carol and I watched it together and I was
pumping the air in passionate agreement with 90% of what Hughes said about the
debasement of all artistic and critical values and their replacement with market
values. Yet again – nothing Hughes said was that original – the inter-net for
example – was fully of diatribes against the greed, stupidity and vulgarity of
contemporary artists, dealers and collectors. However, unlike most grumpy old
men – Hughes could back everything he said up with a cast-iron reputation in
the arts since the 1960s. I would have recommended any young bleary-eyed artist
despairing at their ill fortune to watch this documentary – for it would show
them how sick, twisted and corrupt the art-game was.
My one dispute with Hughes was his use of
Pop artist friends like Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Rosenquist to support his
argument. Both of these elderly artists carping about the art world had become
multi-millionaires because of the art market. In fact, many of the old,
venerated and rich art world commentators in the programmes sounded like whores
in a brothel complaining someone had let a few young porn stars in the
building.
The
Second show The Oligarts presented by
Marcel Theroux - was the weakest of the three documentaries – but gobsmacking
all the same. Of the half-dozen or so billionaire Oligarch collectors he
interviewed only two displayed any refined taste– and even they seemed
mercenary collectors without any soul. While two or three of them had such bad
taste in fashion, art and homes – that they made twenty-year-old Rappers look
like Kenneth Clark. I thanked my luck stars - to have failed at art. I thanked
my lucky stars - that I did not associate with people like that.
The
final show Outback Art: The Gold Rush was
quite simply the most disgusting and heartbreaking documentary on art I had
ever seen – and it opened my eyes wide to the patronizing, manipulating and
racist exploitation of dirt-poor, illiterate, marginalized and utterly
exploited Aboriginal artists by cunning white super-rich trash.
The
show dealt with the many fundamental sacrileges of the longest continuous
culture in human history – dating back well over 40,000 years. The original
Aborigines - before the white collectors came - drew in the sand, carved into
trees and painted on rocks. They did not care if their work lasted – their land
would always last – as would their relationship with it. They did not have
money in their culture – and absolutely no tradition of the easel picture.
Which we had developed in the West in the late 1400s and which John Berger saw
as an adjunct to emergent capitalism.
We all know the British invaded
their land. We all know, that they were treated like dogs by the British, Irish
and European settlers most of them criminals - who stole their land. We all
know they were pushed off their land by successive generations of settlers. We
all know they gave them no help other than food and drink. We all know they got
them dependent on alcohol. We all know that they took many of their children
off them - and raised them as white. We all know that they marginalized and
ignored their plight for decades. However what they then went on to do from the
late 1960s to their culture, heritage and art – was a new one on me. They set up community art centres in the
deserted heart of Australia were the white man had pushed them into. In these
ram shackle wood and aluminium panel buildings - they gave these poor people
acrylic paints and linen canvas. Then they let them paint. Then the money
started to roll in and they pushed more and more paint and canvas under their
noses - to paint and paint. Aboriginal artists like many native artists –
worked on the ground – so they painted on unstretched rolls of top quality
canvas and linen. Once the paintings had been completed by the artists’ – the
white men would roll them up - and bring them to the white cities. Then the
canvases were put on stretchers and framed like western abstract paintings.
In
the community centres, they said they gave the artists fifty percent of all
sales. Yet the Aborigines were all in rags - lying on dirty beds and working in
scummy studios that had not seen a lick of paint in decades. The galleries and
offices of the whites - attached to these compounds though were very nice! The
white people who claimed they worked for the artists were all well dressed.
Many of the artists had large extended families that they had to support with
quick sales. The buyers flew in on planes and then flew out to hang this ‘art’
in their million dollar apartments. I never once heard anyone of these
collectors express a humane, ethical or aesthetic appreciation of the art that
did not sound like sales talk and public relations. Carol started to cry and I
felt like puking on the floor. I called the lot of these white people scum.
Even worse than the community art
centres were the carpet-baggers who had swooped in to pick off the best
(biggest selling) Aboriginal artists and move them to separate camps in even
worse conditions to those of the community centres. These dealers did not have
to reveal their accounting books and so we had to take them at their word when
they said they paid the artists up to fifty percent commission. Again, I saw a
major travesty of Aboriginal culture – the picking out of individual artists
from their community and trying to make them “Picasso’s” of Aboriginal art. In
the long term, I could only imagine what kinds of schizisms this would create
in the Aboriginal community. I knew about the exploitation of artists,
outsiders and other cultures but this documentary was quite simply the most
sickening thing I had ever seen in art. If there was a Hell – then I was sure
many of these collectors of Aboriginal art would end up there.
The auction
rooms and galleries they showed in the documentary were filled with arch, fat,
grotesque white collectors who had only one concern – getting rich of the
labours of poor people - they could not give a dam about.
So western easel painting, western acrylic paints and
linen, western individualism, western capitalism, western market values,
western collectors, western ‘assistants’, western ‘carers’ – all used to foist
‘Aboriginal’ art on the western art world!
What
that made this cultural colonialism even worse – was the staggering beauty of
what they were destroying – a proud and gentle race of people and an art older
than the West. The art they made under these unimaginable conditions was utterly
beautiful – like the dying cry of a lost world. At their best, these paintings
were some of the greatest abstract and symbolic canvases I had ever seen. They
were works of profound dignity – made in a squalid world.